Bruised

I awoke bruised, elated and afraid. I grab the broom, I step into the street, and I start to sweep.

An auditory mist has descended on the city. I conscientiously take stock of the sounds: sirens, stray cats, neglected babies, distraught families. All are audible but foggy. Maybe my ears are still ringing from yesterday. I focus on sweeping.

The road is hollow. I sweep dust, dirt, and soot. Occasionally I lapse from consciousness into memory. My body shook with rage. I yelled with passion. Or was my body shaken by the mob? Was I screaming in pain?; best to go with the tide. My eyes are closed and I waver, feeling as though the tide of people who had surrounded me in the streets were still there. We had been one, a crowd as one individual: a country.

I am brought to consciousness by voices. On the second floor balcony of the building beside mine Javier and Natella look out over the railing and smoke.

“It is going to rain today” says Natella.

“It is going to be hot” says Javier.

“I don’t like those clouds” says Natella.

“That’s just smog” says Javier “That’s nothing different”.

“Smog and smoke...and dust” says Natella “There’s no wind. This sky will never clear.”

It’s too soon. They don’t mention yesterday. They don’t say why there is smoke. They don’t say what stirred dust into the air. They can’t see clearly enough to assign morality to that smoke and dust so they don’t talk about it.

I pretend not to be listening. It must be obvious though. When they stop talking I start sweeping again. In this street the repeated swish of my broom on the pavement seems very loud. It sounds like waves crashing against the shore. I lose myself in memory again.

At first all I see is blackness. Then I see fire. Then I see gas masks, tall plastic shields, and night sticks. I can almost imagine being hurled out of the crowd and sailing, end over end, across the divide. I land and explode. I realize the fleeing straggler I knocked over is young and earnest. I am unable to apologize. He manages to get up and dash after his squad around the corner. I pick up a rock and throw that too. A window shatters. Lots of windows shatter. It’s not my fault. We surge on.

“What shall we have to eat?” says Javier.

“What have we to eat.” says Natella.

“I’m not hungry” says Javier. He stretches his arms back with nonchalance. He lies poorly, but I know how he feels. I have no hunger either.

In my chest, my heart still beats fast. I still feel different like yesterday. Everything still feels different. I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know what time it is. I still feel some excitement. I still have that feeling that I am a part of something bigger. I still feel powerful. I sweep gladly. I will always be happy to sweep in front of my building on days like today. National identity has inebriated me.

“When will it be over?” asks Natella.

“Let it run its course” says Javier.

“When will it stop?”

“It must be fixed”

“How will this fix it.” says Natella. She doesn’t ask this, but states it as a fact.

“What choice do we have?” says Javier. This is also a statement.

The words tumble from their mouths. It isn’t an argument, it’s a spoken exercise. Their responses are the only ones available. It is a complicit, vain effort to imagine they’re in control, whilst the undertow pulls them this way and that.

The politicians are criminals. The government is corrupt. This isn’t a debate. Of course we are justified. One must confront evil; simple as that. It was our duty. Of course we are right. It was all of our duties. We showed strength and unity. We proved them wrong. This is what our noble history has taught us to do. This what our great philosophers would have done. Wouldn’t they?

Now my memory leaves me cold and wet. I hear the ambulance. I see red and blue lights. Is that us or them? I want to throw a rock at the ambulance. I can’t, there is a crowd in the way. I get closer. They are moving a youth in a white T-shirt into the back. He is limp. His arm is bent funny over the side of the stretcher. They have come to save us. Or try. Ferry our dead if nothing else.

My eyes fall to the ground. My broom is sweeping slower. I am sweeping broken glass, used canisters, and blood crusted rocks. I feel nausea. I feel vertigo. I feel seasick.

“I’m embarrassed. Its sickening.” says Natella.

“Me too.” says Javier. “And I am proud.”

“Me too.” says Natella.

They are both bad liars.

I sweep the concrete, but no broom would clean these stains. Soap and water won’t clean these stains. It is futile. They will come and clean it I suppose. The government will. They will come and clean our mess. We will let them. What choice do we have? They came and saved our wounded. They weren’t even fighting us, just keeping us from hurting ourselves. They are us. We are them. We hurt ourselves. If they hadn’t fought back we would have burned down the government. We are the government. They were fighting against us, because they are us. We are them. I can’t make sense of things.

I lean on my broom and look up at Javier and Natella. They don’t see me. Their faces look like mine: lost, drifting, and afraid. Nothing has gotten better. And now our country bears a self-inflicted wound. I look down. At my feet I find a trampled Starbucks coffee cup. I want to cry.

“What comes next?” asks Natella.

“I don’t know.” says Javier.

“I’m afraid.” says Natella.

“Me too.” says Javier.

“Will things be different?” asks Natella.

“Yes,” says Javier “and no.”

I had been sweeping hope, dreams, and the future we used to imagine. But the present, the apparent, the foreseeable future, like the stained the earth, could not be swept by a broom. These things could not be washed with soap and water. These things couldn’t be burned in angry rage. Deep down we had know this long before we tried. Now we knew because we have tried. Maybe tomorrow we will know because today we will try again, and maybe also the day after that. If we know that fighting is futile, and we know we are only fighting ourselves, but we keep doing it, are we even worth fighting for?

I too, like Natella, feel embarrassed. I feel like a fool. I kneel down and vomit. I go back inside without cleaning. The government will clean it. I can no longer care.

The Summer Time

The only thing I can think to write about is a swimming pool in a back yard. The backyard is overgrown and does not seem as big as it is. Bushy pines at the back and lilacs along the sides crowd the space. The lawn is all but lost to dandelions which have gone to seed and now spout from cracks in the pool deck as well. The tiles of the pool itself may be dirtied cream colour or may be sun-bleached tan. At the bottom of the pool are three lawn chairs.

The lawn chairs are occupied by twenty-seven year olds. It is an unlikely trio because each member only truly understands one of the other two, and the one they understand is not the one who understands them. Despite this awkward social trierarchy they found great comfort in each other’s company. The effect of sitting in the pool cools them, even if none ever saw it while it held water. On a smoggy day like this none of the three can imagine anything better.

The conversation begins with obligatory inquiries of quotidian tidings back home, and is briefly sustained on the tired fodder of their workaday lives. Silence ensues. Yet a tacit resolve that the occasion for company is not to be wasted endures.

The smaller of the two men, the man with brown hair is hungriest for conversation. “Stories.” he says, interjecting spontaneously, “Let’s tell stories.”

The woman with freckles is a better social tactician. She knows no good stories come without a little gerrymandering, so she amends brown haired man’s remark.

“I propose a challenge” she says, looking daringly into the others’ eyes “Which of use three, right now, can tell the best love story.”

The brown haired man is eager but the tall blond haired man is not. He grits his teeth, leans way back, and stalls “A love story…I don’t have a good love story” he says, complaining.

The others cajole but still he stalls.

He is powerfully tall with broad shoulders; his features are sharply defined; he has an easy nature which commands respect. Due to his physical aspects no group he is in ever takes an action without his consent, which he usually confers implicitly.

“I’ll go first,” says the brown haired man “you’ll think of something.”

“It can be anything,” says the woman with freckles “any kind of love story.” She pats the tall man’s knee, but her hand slows to a rub and then falls aside. “I’m sure you know some love stories. Don’t cha big fellow?” She says, coyly toying with the implication of his sexual success.

“All right,” says the brown haired man, but before he can begin his story the tall manfinally raises up his figure, sits straight in his chair, agrees to the contest, and takes the floor to begin it.

Ohhhhhh-K. Madeline Thompson. The girl I met in the same way that I left – running in opposite directions.

I was running after a bus, she was going the other way; we smashed, spun around each other, and landed on the grass, lying face to face. She was the epitome of elegance, dignity, and femininity. While I lay watching as she dusted herself courtly, and was on her way, neither expecting nor offering apology.

My friends teased me about this afterwards. There was clearly one wealthy, classy, proud family in that whole town and it was hers. I was sort of hung up on the idea of class because I’d just arrived then and I still felt like I had to prove my family to be of class. But in any event, I saw a sort of shroud around her. She was almost like a god. I was insecure of my own status and I wanted her, at first not because I thought she was beautiful, or I knew anything about her personally, but because I saw that others liked her, and that others thought she was beautiful.

I remember being stumped as to how I would win this girl who I only knew by having ploughed over her, and for all I knew didn’t recall me at all. When I told my father that there was this girl and I didn’t know how to win her, he was all afraid I guess that I would offend the family name, so he gave me real formal advice from back home. He probably repeated what my grandfather told him after he met my mother. First he said that I had no hope, and he made sure I knew this; then he said that I had first to get permission from her parents before I courted her.

So one day, I was dressed up in what I thought was really high end clothes and I walked up to their place, this Tudor mansion which was sort of separate from any other houses in the town. I rang the bell. Her parents were so distinctly wealthier than the town that they raised their daughter very much away from the rest of it; she even had a few tutors that drove in from other places to teach her once a week. She was raised very conscientiously as an upper class Madame.

When her father opened the door I was all stiff and I introduced myself. I held the handshake for too long. Then I announced that I was there to meet his daughter and he looks at me kind of funny. He turns and shouts “Maddy! You’ve got a friend here.”

We wait on the door step awkwardly with him looking back and forth between me and the front hallway. I’m trying to show astute posture and best manners to impress him and he’s can’t understand me at all. I remember feeling distinctly foreign at that moment.

So eventually his daughter comes down the stairs but stops halfway and points to me “I don’t know him” she says. She said it soft, but not exactly disinterested either, but her father turns to me, eye brows high, for an explanation.

“I’m here to ask you permission, sir,” I said, addressing the father, “to meet your daughter.”

“Well, my permission?” he said both flattered and amused “It’s really my daughter’s choice. What do you say honey? Would you like to meet this, fine chap? Alex?” he said, shortening my name for me. “What ever you do be polite”, was his last advice to his daughter. And with that he left us there with the doorway open.

She came down the stairs, and very cordially gave her name, took my hand and shook it, and the courtship began. I was so impressed and awed by her that for a second I felt a humming bird inside my chest.

‘The courting’ was done almost exclusively at her house, mostly because I assumed this would have been the insistence of her parents. I would call around tea time and join the family as if that added respectability to my cause.

We would stand afterwards in her very large drawing room, separated by the posh furnishings looking out the window to save ourselves looking at each other. We would discuss the future, our families, and our friends. I would try to make jokes but she never laughed except in little soft laughs to herself, apparently at the immaturity of my humour.

It went on like this for some time, and as I spent more time I spent with her the less I was interested in her high class standing, though I still thought of her constantly. I was now however, more occupied by her beauty.

As the root of my ambition shifted from pragmatism to attraction, I became more and more positive that I would be rebuffed at any request to move forward both by her and her parents. There was probably no tangible basis for this feeling, just inner self doubt playing tricks on itself.

“Why do we meet like this?” She asked distractedly one day.

“Like what?” I said “How else should we meet?”

“We only meet at my house, and we always dress up.” She giggled to herself. “Oh come on. I don’t even know why I dress-up for you visits anymore. And don’t try to tell me you usually dress in that shirt.”

“Well I must dress” I said; face reddening “It’s appropriate.”

She adopted a posture of simultaneous ridicule and exasperation. I was never as attracted as when she struck that pose.

“I must dress like this,” I sputtered “to impress your parents. Otherwise they’ll never let me go on a date with you.”

“Well who are you dating?” she shot back, “me or my parents?” By that point I had really fallen for her in total, but I was still touchy at the thought that she saw through my initial intentions. “You don’t need to ask my parents.”

“But I do!” I said “It’s a custom.”

“If you insist, heavens; go ahead and ask. You’re in the twenty first century Al.” She had never called me Al before. “You’re in the west. You either want me or you don’t.” She said, ending the conversation, and leaving me to let myself out.

At this point I loved her. It was puppy love, or youthful love, but it was love and I had no difficulty recognizing it. I was hurt that my formality which was meant to show maturity was taken by her as timidity, and foreign immaturity. When I returned home I had my parents call to invite her parents over for dinner that weekend.

The Thompson’s were not only seventh generation Canadians but the seventh generation residents of that town. Like most rural towns, built-up on one -- now dead -- industry, ours was shrinking and had its own doubts when it came to status. I knew only vaguely that Madeline’s parents no longer worked in the business that had made the Thompson family fortune and I was too cautious to come out and ask her directly what that business was. In my youthful mind, I had constructed a narrative in which her family - pristine décor, live in maid, and three garages filled with European cars – lived beyond their means. I had the naïve supposition that if my parents displayed a foreign sophistication and aristocracy which suggested wealth they would be impressed and desire their daughter marry into it.

Though it had great potential to be stiff or to seem forced, the dinner went off without a hitch. Talk ranged over all parts of the immigrant experience, and life in rural Ontario. Our parents hit it off and to this day they are frequent dinner guests at each other’s house.

The next day I was round at Madeline’s where, meeting her father at the door I chatted for a bit then ask it he would object to taking his ‘lovely daughter’ on a date.

“Why, young fellow! Naturally,” He said, patting my shoulder, and shook his head. “Such manners. Contingent of course” he added in good humour, “on her accepting you offer.” We both shared a laugh, but I still blushed. I had actually even then expected her father to answer no. Maybe I did not expect it to be cold, or outright, but I expected a rejection none the less. There in the front hall was one of the most unexpected happiness’s I had ever felt.

We dated for a few months, movies, dinners, the carnival, plays at the outdoor festival. It was all I wanted but somehow for me the thrill wasn’t there. The longer I dated her, the more I realized that if, lying on the lawn, I had kissed her that first day I saw her, I would probably have saved myself all the leg work I had made for myself.

And as she herself had said: It was the twenty first century and I was in the west. The eastern tradition my father had taught me did not apply here. In a bored town like this it was girls or drugs, and both were readily available. I wanted the North American freedom, I smelled the fresh air. I loosened my top button, and got a tattoo with letting my parents know parents.

Conversely, once we began dating Madeline became somewhat enamoured with the formality I had introduced to her. The power and flattery it offered her had a strong hold. She could not get that from the culture I was gravitating to. I disappointed her.

So we split. It lasted four months. It wasn’t sad. We were no longer in love - if she ever was at all I don’t know. We were headed in opposite directions, and we haven’t stayed in touch since.

Following the end of the tall man’s story, the brown haired man immediately began his, but he began slowly and softly and the other two didn’t seem to notice. The woman with freckles was athletic and wore a pony tail. She was a very energetic person, which meant she was sometimes mistaken for being a caring person. Regardless she never had difficulty in getting people’s attention.

“Wow!” she said “A personal love story; fiendish. Well, I’m not in my story, but I think it’s still pretty good….”

She had the undivided interest of both the tall man and the man with the brown hair.

Mark and Mary. Mark and Mary woke at sunrise, each at the exact same instant. Mark rolled onto his left side, and Mary mirrored him onto her right at an identical pace. They peered across the bed’s axis of symmetry and looked into the other’s eyes. It was often that they spent much time like this, teasing each other, or breathing the silence. They were in love. Today was no different.

“When are you going to shave that beard darling?” She said, reaching over and running the back of her hand along his cheek “Or are you just getting a very early head start on the auditions for the Santa Claus parade?”

“You’re beautiful.” He said, peeling her one hand off his face and wrapping it in both of his. This subtle gesture of his, dodging her touch, sequestering her affectionately offered hand, spoke volumes to Mary. She knew he was going to leave. She had suspected it before but somehow this served as conformation for her. She felt relieved. She was very relieved.

It was a work day.

“Do you have a shirt ironed?” She said.

He shook his head.

“Pant’s?”

Again.

“Brain?”

“Honey,” He said, “You ironed out every possible crease in that long ago”. They shared a giggle. “And, you singed the parts you didn’t like.” He got up, but reached back in to bed to tickle her. She leaned up and held his cheeks to kiss him.

He had come to the small town on a work term. Postings to such bucolic backwaters were a right of passage for freshly graduated engineers in his firm. She was a proudly born and raised citizen of the town. She was very well versed in the nuances of small town reputation, romance, and gossip. He had campaigned for her to move back with him to the city. She had campaigned for him to extend his posting there or make it permanent. She would never leave the town where her family was distinguished, her father the chief of police, her uncle the mayor. She was a snob. He would never cement himself to small town life and the lower echelon of his company’s hierarchy. He was ambitious.

She had known the risk when she met him. In the town, dating temporary workers was frowned upon. Her case was no exception, regardless if she personally thought she could convince him to stay. The town ridiculed her at first as loose, then as unwise. But spring became summer, the days left in his term thinned, and there was a growing sense that she might just have enough pull for him to stay. Right down to the last Saturday they strolled to market hand in hand. Holding on to him would be a coup of daring and vision, and vault her status immeasurably in the town. It would be historic in the circles of the town’s ladies to land a big city engineer – and keep him. All of a sudden the engineer’s handsomeness, competence, and exoticism seemed extremely desirable to the town’s folk. Mark and Mary were the object of great jealousy, no longer derision.

Few noticed however her tight grip on his hands as they walked the street. The tight grip of desperation. If she could only hold him tight enough perhaps he would stay?

They had spoken briefly of a long distance relationship, and when their love was most intense it almost seemed possible. Theirs was an intimate physical love. The talk of staying in love while living apart was false. They both knew rationally that such an arrangement would be pointless.

Then she had dug. Then she read his email. Then she mined his phone. He had made his move, informed his superiors. More than that, he had planned ahead. He would not be lonely back in the big city. He had spread tentacles. His bait had found a bite.

Did this really make a difference to Mary? She was vengeful and cunning, and told herself that yes: it was only because of his deceit. She bore no further grudge. She didn’t care if he left, she rationalized, or of its effect on her reputation in the town. But his deceit, however, changed the ball game. Lying, leaving her in doubt. Planting seeds of his next courtship before he ended with her warranted retribution.

That morning was his last workday. She brewed coffee for him just like any other day, and leaned over the counter to watch him eat breakfast at the table. There was only one question to ask.

“Mark,” she asked, “will you stay?”

“No.” He replied, looking straight at her.

“Then I’ll…I’ll kill you” She said, an offer, not a statement.

“That’s ridiculous. You wouldn’t.” He said. He put down his toast.

“I’ll kill you.” She said. Now with certain conviction.

“You couldn’t.” He said, though he knew she could. “You love me.” This was true, but knew it hardly meant she wouldn’t kill him. None the less he thought it unlikely.

She just stared at him.

“How,” He said, “How would you kill me?”

“Poison,” She said simply.

“What kind of poison?” He asked.

"Temultrane” She said, shocking him by having a specific answer. “It shows no effects for two days and then kills. There is no antidote.”

“Do you have temultrane?” He asked.

She opened the small draw where they kept pills and vitamins and produced a bottle.

“Holy shit!” he said, his heart was now pounding in his chest.

“It’s right here” She said simply.

“Fucking creep!” He said “ you’re a fucking creep! That is really fucking creepy?”

“Better believe it, babe” She said. Sass.

Her intensity, her assertive cocksureness was what had attracted him when they had met. He was hard.

“I love you.” He said.

She tip-toed around the counter, behind his chair, pulled his neck back and they shared a long tense kissed. She swung around the chair planning to straddle him but he was too strong and saw it coming. He had no difficulty lifting her and laying her on her back on the edge of the table. While he undid the knot of her draw strings she reached up to unbutton his nightshirt, spreading her open palms across his chest.

The table rocked as he filled her again and again. She was red; he could tell she was receptive. He was right. That morning he impregnated her. Her cries of blissful agony were muffled by his palm over her mouth.

When exhaustion overcame them she served the coffee which had finished brewing. Once again she stood behind the counter and he sat at the table. They refastened their bed clothes. Watching him sip his coffee she saw he was ill at ease, and it hurt her to see him in discomfort.

“I love you” He said, looking up pleadingly.

“And, I love you.” She said. “I love you but you’re leaving. So I’ll kill you.”

“You’ll really kill me if I leave?” He said.

“yes” she said

“But if I stay just because you’ve threatened to kill me it won’t work either” he said. “What good is that?”

“It’s no good” she said

“It would be awful” he said.

“It would be awful” she said.

“But you’re still going to kill me”, he asked, “if I leave?”

She nodded.

“Ok” He said “Then I’ve decided. I love you, but it still won’t work. It just isn’t going to work.” Then he said “Despite your threat to kill me.”

“I know” she said.

“Well I’m going to leave. I’m going straight from work today.” He said “No matter what, and take my chances that you’re bluffing with this poison stuff. It’s just what I have to do.”

“I know.” she said.

“So that’s it.” he said.

“I know” She said.

He exploded: “I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW; WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW? HUH?!!! HUH?!! FUCKING SAY SOMETHING? YOU CREEP! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!” In the days and months after the trial cleared her name, the neighbours would still remember hearing this hoarse shout out the open windows, echoing through the crisp morning air, sending shivers down their spines.

He stood chest heaving. He thought of, but never mentioned, that it was just as much her staying as it was him leaving. She bore his glare, and decided to keep to herself that she knew he was cheating.

He left to change and collect his belongings. He returned dressed for work, suitcase in one hand and briefcase in the other. She hadn’t moved in twenty minutes.

“Good bye” he said. And he turned to leave.

“It’s too late.” she said, and he turned back.

The drawer was open. She had the bottle of temultrane pills in her hand. She shook it.

It was empty.

The brown hair man was to meekest of the group. He was chronically underestimated by everyone he met. He was passive, his thoughts moved very slowly. His hearing was bad and he often had to ask for people to repeat themselves. They only obliged sometimes. He was thin in his arms and legs but was pot bellied at the front and had terrible posture. Even when he stood up it looked like he was sitting down.

Given time however, those who underestimated him would come to see the error of their initial judgement. Without exception, he astounded them.

Only when the other’s asked explicitly, and then begged, did he finally begin his story in earnest.

Ok. This is a story about a single facial expression, and in that expression is a certain type of love. Different than the love in your stories, but assuredly it is love.

It all begins innocently enough with a teen-age romance. It was right when Davies started getting real close to Lizy. Davies – I believe you both know Mike Davies? Even the teachers just called him Davies back then. Him and Lizy, well, they’re still together today right? So, yeah, this was about when they first met.

Me and Davies, we’ve been real close since all the way up. This was the first time one of us had a steady girlfriend, and really, at first, it wasn’t steady: it was obsessive. They were glued. For me, I was happy for Davies because Lizy is nice, but I was also lonely. Me and Davies weren’t a part of any cliques, we were friends with everyone, but still a bit set apart. So all of a sudden I didn’t have a girlfriend, and also, my best friend spent all his time with his. I guess it was tough for me. Because of this though, I think I remember stuff from around then a little better. That’s how I have this story to tell.

Now, while he spent more time with Lizy, after school or whatnot, he never drifted away from Clara. Clara is his mom but I call her Clara because I used to spend a lot of time at that house, since I was a kid. She and Mikey, -she called him Mikey – had the best mother-son relationship ever. They were tight. She’s always been really cool too, one of those moms who’s always on your side. She was always nice. You can’t help liking her if you meet her.

All the same, there was one thing that sets Clara ticking though. Cigarettes, smoking, and tobacco: She just cannot, can not, abide it. I can even remember she used to tell me when I was a toddler, over at their place for lunch: “Never, never, never start smoking. Ok? For a grilled cheese sandwich that’s all you have to promise.” Clara isn’t like a real puritan or anything, but she just never wanted Mikey to smoke and it was like a real big deal, something she instilled in him all the time, since he was born.

It was a little after he started with Lizy that Clara called my house to ask if Mikey was smoking. She was real concerned like, and I was baffled. “Mikey? No. Mikey no. He wouldn’t smoke Mrs Davies.” But she asked me a couple times and again asked if I was sure. Later I saw her in person too. She got real close to me, and I was confused, but I realized she was seeing if I smelled like smoke. I guess after Mikey began to spend so much time at Lizy’s he really reeked of smoke. Or at least his clothes did. Clara was a concerned mom.

This was all because Lizy’s mom – a totally different family situation than Mikey - Lizy’s mom was at home all day and Lizy’s dad owns a carpet factory or something, but Lizy’s mom stayed at home washing dishes, cooking, all that stuff, but the whole time smoking like an absolute chimney. She seemed to smoke dawn to dusk. Every time I saw her she was smoking. That house just reeked of cigarettes. Sometimes, in winter even, I’d see her idling the car waiting to pick up Lizy or Mikey after school. The window would be rolled down so she could smoke. She’s friendly sure, she smiled at me because she knew I was Mikey’s friend. But she was kind of nuts because they’d drive off with the window down a bit and cigarette smoke blowing out. Twenty below.

I guess Mikey’s father smoked. He left when Mikey was young. I never met him. I think just the smell of smoke makes Clara think of Mikey’s father. In those days Mikey would be coming home heavy with cigarette smell every day. Clara always wanted real good things for her boy, she was a real protective being a single mother. She starts getting suspicious, Mikey doesn’t want to set his mother against Lizy so he tries just to shrug her off.

The fights between Mike and Clare start. It was pretty horrifying because each of them was such a big part of the other’s life. I saw the start of one of these arguments and Mikey refused to say anything bad about Lizy or even to blame it on Lizy’s mom. Clara is sure Lizy is making him smoke, that she’s a bad influence. Davies hardly said anything I because he felt betrayed that Clara didn’t just take his word no matter what.

This situation gets worse and worse over a few months. Single mother, only child, house built on trust for fifteen years, I bet there were some real quiet nights there for a while.

One day, she is furious, storming along the sidewalk and meets up with Mikey and Lizy who are walking the other way. They stop in the middle of the sidewalk to talk, but it’s really just the continuation of an old argument, very tense but softened a bit for the sake of Lizy who is standing right there. Mikey’s hands are jammed in his pockets, he’s being kind of defiant.

“Mikey, you reek of tobacco” she says “You absolutely reek”

Davies shrugs and jams his hands in his pockets defiantly.

Clara picks up on this and grabs his hand out of his pocket with sudden force before he can pull back. She has the palm right over her nose. His hand is practically touching her whole face. She readies herself and then takes this big whiff. Like a huge whiff cause she’s all worked up and pissed.

What I wouldn’t have done to have to see the look in her face. Mikey was at my house that night right after it happened. He’d never seen his mother like that before, and they were very close. After a while his thinking changed. I think he came to realize the love in that face. I think from that face he came to realize how much he loved her. We were teen agers then so we used different words but…

Things got back in place between them after that. It had the effect of forcing their relationship from the adolescent stage to the adult stage in one instant. One look on her face was the change. I could tell too by the way she treated me after. She was a lot more respectful and mature talking to me. She was less sanctimonious.

I guess it’s easy for a single mom to lose perspective with worrying about smoking cigarettes or something like that, and not see how their kids are growing up regardless. If they smoke or not – they have to choose that themselves at some point. And as a parent, you have to decide if your love had boundaries or not. You have to trust them without an inquisition. She was also less stressed after that. And by the time she finally met Lizy’s mom and understood why he smelled like smoke it hardly made a difference any more. So maybe in the long haul it was good – but her face, I have to tell you how her face looked.

Her hair is this red hair that Mikey doesn’t have a touch of. She has a very earnest face; the type you know instinctively is good when you see it. She has big soft eyes. Mikey’s hand is there in her face which is all scrunched up, and she is all worked up and ready to hit him because he reeks of smoke. She is sure she has caught him red handed.

Then there’s that big whiff, but she can’t place it right away. It’s not cigarette smoke, so she’s relieved. She exhales like she’s just breathed in a bouquet of flowers: She is satisfied. Mikey said she even begins to smile. Then she has the hand still in her face and she smells a bit longer and her memory catches up. She still has her hand around his wrist, nails digging in. Mikey doesn’t say anything. What can he say? She like lifts her eyes to his and once more pulls his hand to sniff briefly, just once more to be sure, oh yeah, she knows what it is. Her face washed with a powerful memory of intimacy – and oedipal revulsion.

She drops Mikey’s hand then walks on, leaving them standing there, not saying a word. She just keeps on walking. That powerful smell, Mikey checked his own hand after just to make sure, the smell was real strong and very definitely, it was the smell of Lizy’s vagina.

Mikey smiled, leaned over, and kissed Lizy lightly on the cheek. They held hands as they walked the rest of the way.

101 Margaret

Yellowy sun rays shine past swollen clouds, nearly parallel to the floor. They leave long warped shadows on the lit white walls of the 14^th storey’s south side units. Mother sits out of their path; in a shadow, dark blue like a bruise.

I let myself in and put on tea for two. On the balcony – whipping winds and twenty-one degrees below zero bedammed – I avoid looking over the rail. Cigarette burned up; I slide back inside and talk to my mother.

She never says much any more. Nagging, guidance, and spunk: dispersed in gusts of ancient history.

“Drink your tea Ma.”

She sips twice, stares into my eyes - her part of the conversation – and fades out, vacant. Her head tilts towards the doorway. Steam curls in on itself as it rises out of tea into sunshine. Dust hangs in the air. It’s my turn to talk.

“Do you remember Ma? Remember when we went to Paris?" She says nothing. "How about the beach in Livorno and those girls?" Still nothing; "The view from the hotel in Davos?”

Family trips: How many single mothers take their kids on European vacations? That’s her line not mine. She doesn’t know to say it so often now, at all now, but she used to. Now I hear her say it; whether it’s out loud or not.

She starts rocking, then stops. Drinks her tea, rocks, then stops. I look away. Out the window, the sun dances behind clouds. The sky today is a shade, not a colour.

I imagine my life lived again. If I am obedient, compliant, and pay head to Mom’s spunk: where am I now? Where is she now? I see myself as she dreamt I would become back then: Female achiever, my brilliant career. I am a powerful, competent, well dressed bitch. My sister too. Ma is old and hunched, but inscrutably cunning, canny.

“Do you think, Ma…”

It’s no use to ask. How could she explain what caused it if the doctor can’t? I still believe she knows. Even if she cannot explain it. I know the reasons for my own fate. Even if I cannot explain it. I use ‘spunk’ now; I used ‘tyranny’ then.

I remember what did happen. My sister: tattoo, drop out, pregnant, gone. Me: tentative, tender, married, social work. Coming in the back door, mom naked on the floor squirting ketchup into tea cups singing All you need is love top of her lungs. Realizing I’m there, that sheepish look. I’ll never forget that sheepish look. She grew old as fast as she grew-up. Second childhood. Second innocence.

I stand and my shadow darkens the room. The reflection of my sweater tints the whole room aquamarine. I watch the shadow and follow it as it takes her empty tea cup. I leave the dishes by the sink. The nurse will clean these.

I couldn’t accept that she was so far gone at first. This woman, this…demon who hovered on both my left and right shoulders, my one and only coach, advisor, consul, and nemesis: evaporated. I thought it was symbolic, a message, I tried to decode the hidden viciousness implied by ketchups in tea cups. All you need is love. All you need is love. Dr. Morris: “No ma’am, I’m sorry, she doesn’t even know her own name…”

I put my shoes on and close the door forgetting to say good bye.

She can’t forgive me now. Even if she remembers, she is too innocent to forgive. I don’t need her to. This guilt is mine: my invention and my burden, until the wind takes it, until it fades away.

Indolent Strolling

I was indolently strolling along the winding walkway of a modern, northern campus; one of those aspiring, ambitious, win now, progressively technological, objectively vocational institutions, where I had just attended one of its begrudged classes artistic nature. It was springtime.

I mean when I say it was springtime that it was early spring, the first melting of the hated winter that occurs, even in high altitude climes, well before the technical coincident of winter’s cessation and spring’s commencement, when mildly warm temperatures seem truly inspirational and reinvigorate the dulled skull of the young academic into absconding studies for the sake of such warm walkways as this, as well as lazy collegial fairways and fermented cedar patios where at the consumption of wine and cakes, and chances to wear bright clothing reveals an urge to bathe in the optimism, the optimism which seeps from the ground with abandon on just such spring days until, reserve stock from last fall used up, it is slain by March’s late lion, a second winter which brutally recidivises the so soon ago sunny students with a pointed, stifling absence of heat, and inverse preponderance of swift winds from the west. It happens every year, you could live it a millions years, but the first spring is always the best.

I too inhaled the optimism and found myself in pleasant anticipation of the night to come. To this end, I was partaking in that modern informatic exchange, identified so strongly with the green post-adolescents who flooded by me torrentially in each direction, or so I thought, and whom, in the strictest sense, I would be classified along with should a taxis be based on age and occupation alone. As I texted, wringing from my head the pithy brief trite note (Purpose: arrange that evening’s rendezvous), I became completely absorbed in the small rectangular cell-phone screen from which I sent my text; So completely engrossed in the interface of the flat vacuous two-toned media, that I believe my perception literally abated all peripheral inputs in the absolute; How can we say no to a television set when we so poorly resist even the modicum of stimulus provided in a text message? I believe my message went:

To-Knights move: not so white. Where shall we, into the rising bubbles, fall?

And in editing and reediting and slowly finding my finger’s way around the 9 digits so ineptly presenting the alphabet’s 26 letter array, my head and shoulders slumped and my feet, without the aid of mind, found their own way off the walkway and onto the regularity of a train-track with runs through the university, step, step, step, step. It amazes me the hold of a past era’s technology, no matter how sharply it comes to juxtapose modernity, on the shapes and economies of posterity.

And so, thinking little of my whereabouts, not being from that part of town, I construed in my internal compass only that I was headed north, towards downtown, towards the bars, pubs, and clubs: attraction for low-lifes and intellects alike.

I should excuse myself here to the veterans of the cell-phone texting, that being new to this form of dialogue I had not conditioned myself only to accord it no more than small quanta of neural resources and was not, as other more proficient texters may be, immune to the condition of mental absenteeism to which I succumbed in its use.While I finished reverting hyphens to brackets, then back to hyphens, and finally hyphens to commas, two thoughts simultaneously sifting around my brain. First was the humorous image of a face wrapped in perplexity as my whimsical dispatch was read by its intended recipient, a dimly lad, who shares in comparison with me only an affection for filling his personal tank beyond capacity with ale, one or two times per week or weekend. The second thought, more insidious, more sad, was an ethos which had been plaguing me on the days leading up to that one, as it has done on numerous days before and days since. In simplest terms, I speak of a periodic, subconscious - undoubtedly subconscious - desire to avoid people. It’s a frantic, foggy, mental state of fear, embarrassment, and weakness, which washes through me like a snow thaw flash flood. I feel it in not just in my mind, but every part of my body: a need to escape, to run, to hide, to seclude. I have been overcome with such feelings in childhood, adolescence, and apparently, by the severity of this bout, not grown out of it. Loneliness. It’s not that in such times I could rationally justify the sick revulsion I endured at the thought of people, strangers especially, but that instead of hunger, thirst and exhaustion, withdrawal became my most basic need. Knowing not what invites, or banishes such a condition makes it a most fickle visitor upon thee.

I have concluded more recently that those who don’t see other people, don’t talk to other people, or don’t work with other people regularly, as a matter of course in their daily lives, and aren’t put into such social situations with out a conscious effort to do so, are doomed to introversion, avoidance, and loneliness within a matter of months, regardless and any inherent social determinant such as upbringing, genetic make-up, or personal quality. But, notwithstanding of such unfounded theoretical opinions, I was at the time in a mood of recovery and quite eager, quite desperate, for contact, so that a night with a trustworthy but not intrusive mate seemed the cure for what ailed me. As such, when I clapped my phone shut, knowing I would be in touch with my friend later, and seeing no strangers around me, a subtle euphoria rinsed my spirit and I took a sporadic light skip forward along the tracks: glee.

I continued to walk hardly any farther before the issue of there being no one around me became troubling and I paused to take in my surroundings which I recognized not in the slightest. On each side of the tracks the land dropped away to leave me a most stunning, beautiful, clear view of two urban landscapes which will haunt me as long as my memory serves. I’ll save a description for now, because despite these epic sceneries, most astonishing to me then, was that turning around, I realized that directly behind me the tracks ran through a tunnel dug into a rock face. The puzzlement to my senses of course was that having seemingly just stepped out of it, I must have just walked though it, to get there, though for the life of me I had no recollection of doing so. An unsettling nausea rippled over me. It did not seem reasonable that I could have been so lost in composing a text message that I traversed a tunnel’s unique luminary and auditory landscape it without realizing.

Straining my eyes into the tunnel I could discern it was straight long and narrow by the tip of day light visible at the other end of it. Having no other alternative explanation I concluded stubbornly that I must march back across the tunnel whence I had come.

One step into the tunnel however, I was ensconced in the monstrous reverberating roar of a locomotive engine. The single white light of day to which I had aimed was replaced with two small yellow lights and a menacing front grill; eventually my eyes adjusted: a train. There was a train coming at me through the tunnel. Though my eyes couldn’t be sure, my ears informed me by the rising pitch of that monstrous rhythmic roar, ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca- chuk-a-chuk. Not only was it coming, it was coming fast. And though neither my eyes could nor my ears could formulate such a notion alone, some perceptive or imaginative fold, likely in the lowest simplest part of my brain, informed me that is was malevolent. I was a malevolent train driving towards me in the tracks on which I stood. Ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca-chuk-a-chuk.

To a sober reader safe in their rocking chair, the personification “a malevolent train” is absurd. Granted. But there on the tracks, my head’s scope of possibilities dilated wildly, and that capricious concept took firm root.

I spun on the spot, taking my eye off the train and stepped forward once, bringing myself to the mouth of the tunnel. I surveyed to the left side of the tracks. I saw before me a meadow, not a meadow of tall grass, purple flowers, and grasshoppers, but a meadow of houses. Sub-urban homes, tidy soft edged crescents and cul-de-sacs, carefully laid down and obsessively pre-planned lot, well mowed laws in chain link fenced lots, flags flying taught in the now rigid breeze that also mildly twisted the swings on the deserted plastic sets in every second back yard. The houses were forts hiding from street view behind garages distanced from the road by manicured flower beds excessively tended to (sprouting crocuses through thick mulch), grassy moats, and an unoccupied ribbon of silver sidewalks. In the distance a shopping plaza of clay brick walls and a chestnut brown steel roof is surrounded in parking spots and featured stores named on yellow and white signs carrying blue and red letters in comic sans font.

Ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca-chuk-a-chuk. Ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca-chuk-a-chuk. I checked the train’s distance, then took another step and brought myself out into broad day light and look to the right.

The other side of the tracks, to the right out of the tunnel, featured a grid, though not a strict grid, but a grid of winding streets that bent at funny angles, a grid formed not for it’s own sake but as the negative space surrounding and supplying the scatter shot buildings tightly packed little squares, all side by side, all slightly different heights, styles and at haphazard angles, so that from the top each block seemed to make out a cubist interpretation of the chess board. The streets were bustling with life, a hot stink of sweet fruits rotting, sweat, and frenzied ambition filled my nostrils as I gazed at it. It was dusty, unkept, and honest, not lacquered over, not hiding anything. The small buildings seemed to spill out their contents onto the streets, unable or unconcerned with containing them. Wide arches served as doorways and invited interchange between the street and living rooms. People moved in all directions, rushing running, pushing carts, dodging cyclists, or chatting, a cigarette in one hand a red apple in the other.

Ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca-chuk-a-chuk. Ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca-chuk-a-chuk. I stared at the train, stared hard, and as if by dint of exquisite observation, the same recess of my being that had produced the notion of the oncoming train being ‘malevolent’ informed me that the choice at hand was a philosophical one, not a physical one, that I could get to the pub and have a drink with my friend on both sides. The train whistle sung out twice. Ooot Ooot. It exasperated me. The whistle then rung a third time, at a lower pitch, a hollow, resounding wail, and stung me, numbing my extremities. In analysis of the wordless, melody less, third whistle I finally become aware, with grave certainty, as if spoken to directly by the train, of the finally aspect of my quandary – the train was eternal. Literally endless, it would pour out of the tunnel beyond all time frames, so that my choice of sides was permanent, no amount of waiting would see out the last car and allow me to cross back to the side I had rejected. I was to be locked between a split, a rift, with only death by sudden violent impact as a third road for indecision between the panoramic dichotomy laid bare before me.

Ca-chuk-a-chuk-ca-chuk-a-chuk. CHUKACHUKACHUKACHUKA!

I took another step forward and stood facing the right; the train was now just about at the tunnel mouth and pass over the ground on which I stood. I gazed at tightly packed, squirming, mephitic, puerile, lively, and vibrant community in the grid themed city below. Though repelled by its overwhelming and awesome intensity, curiosity, intrigue seemed to blanket my perspective of it. I could picture clearly with out looking the suburban landscape behind me of Las Vegas, or Colorado Springs, or Providence, Topeka, Ottawa, Montpellier…it was a trap, it was a labyrinth, a labyrinth one dies in not because the walls are too tall to see over, but because it so winds and sprawls one gives up, convinced that it has is no end, let alone an exit. None of these factors, however, weighed upon my action.

The sound of the train reached its apex and not long could I make out ca-chuk-a-chuk, only the constant, monotone harmony of iron, coal, and fire.

So in my defence of my choice, let me reiterate that the social suspicion, withdrawal, dread of human contact, fright of other people, which resides in me, is subconscious. It lay, and still lies in a part of me I’ll never know. It originated in me, while I lived a house just like those suburban fortresses, accessed by autos and antennae, by men and air waves respectively. And just before the train flew past, looking into the tight hopscotch of the unplanned, unaffected, immortal neighbourhood, I took a step backwards, letting the train pass in front of me, and turned without pause or backwards glance, to stumble on, heading down to the solitary road, eyes fixed on my vibrating cell phone, alerting me to an incoming message.